"Webbiquity" is about being everywhere online when and where buyers are looking for what you sell. It's what I help B2B clients achieve through a coordinated strategy of SEO, search marketing, social media, brand management, content marketing, and influencer relations, supported by the right marketing technology.

As noted here previously, content marketing is now ubiquitous, with 93% of all marketers saying they do content marketing. All of those marketers are creating an enormous amount of content, which is making it difficult to stand out and rise above the noise.

Image credit: HubSpot

To help marketers address that challenge (and others), content marketing experts are also creating an enormous amount of content—about content marketing. These writers face the same challenge.

So what are the secrets to developing content that gets read, shared, and compels action? Here are 88 posts that have risen above the noise, designed to answer that question. Some date back a year or more but remain timely and helpful.

While social media marketing has become commonplace, questions about how to optimize the use of social channels and networks, and how to stand out from the crowd, remain.

Image credit: KISSmetrics

The post 23 Outstanding Social Media Marketing Guides, published here a few weeks ago, answered questions about social media trends, the evolution of social media marketing best practices, and how to optimize use of visual content.

This follow-up post answers several more, such as: what are the best social networks for b2b social media marketing? What are the best and worst times to post updates? How can different networks be used most effectively for lead generation? Which tactics work best today for building a social media following and growing traffic?

Find the answers to those questions and others here in 19 more outstanding social media marketing guides from the past year.

Marissa Pick (no relation, though I joke that she’s my adopted cousin) outlines a handful of rules for successful B2B social media marketing, among them “knowing what to do is just as important as knowing what not to do” (“Every social media campaign needs a strategy, and it’s crucial to understand your goals. Knowing what you want to accomplish and how you will measure success is crucial before you launch any campaign”), “engagement = essential,” and “know your audience.”

Michael Brenner examines findings from Adobe regarding the top social networks for business in the view of CMOs, based on their value for SEO, brand awareness, customer communication, and traffic generation. In addition to the “Big Four,” the findings and associated infographic looked at SlideShare (the “new kid on the block”) as well as “niche players” Google+, Pinterest and Instagram.

Jayson DeMers details seven factors to consider when determining where to focus social media marketing efforts (such as conversions and customer value: “Do visitors bounce immediately off your page, or are they reading your content, amplifying your message and becoming customers? A…detailed analysis can help you determine not only which networks are sending you traffic, but which ones are sending you valuable traffic”) along with seven types of social networks to leverage.

This presentation provides dozens of one-sentence (mostly) social media tips from top experts inlcuding Rebekah Radice, Robert Caruso (“In social media, content leads to conversations, conversations build relationships, and relationships result in ROI”), Kim Garst, Mike Stelzner (“Study your competition and watch where they participate in social dialog. Don’t reinvent the wheel”), and Ann Handley among others.

Randy Krum displays a pair of infographics illustrating the best and worst times to post on social media. The worst times seem generally intuitive (e.g., Facebook between midnight and 8:00 a.m.), though a few are odd (don’t post to LinkedIn during the workday?!). The best times, meanwhile, are shown in pretty short windows (e.g., Twitter between 1:00 and 3:00 p.m.). Interesting – though your mileage may vary.

Nichole Kelly dives into research findings from Social Media Examiner showing that more than a third of marketers now say they are able to measure ROI from social media activities; but 88% say they “want to know how to measure the ROI from social media” (so, a quarter of marketers say they can measure social ROI, but also don’t know how?); that half of marketers say they’ve seen improved sales from social media; and other interesting facts and stats, including my favorite: “85% of marketers have NO plans to use Snapchat. (Thank goodness!).”

Heidi Cohen passes along guidance on “the best way to use social media to generate leads” from 22 social media experts including Michael Brenner, Jeff Cohen, Jason Falls, Neal Schaffer (“The best way to generate leads is to utilize sponsored posts on the relevant social media platform where your customers are utilizing best practices for that platform. Social networks are in business and want you to be successful in your advertising”), and Deb Weinstein.

Brian Honigman presents 10 infographics covering everything from how to create the “perfect” post on various social media platforms and how to size profile images for popular social networks to social media facts and figures (hmm, that sounds familiar), user growth trends across platforms, and the best and worst times to post on social media sites.

Melonie Dodaro shares sever highly useful tips for finding people who are sharing your content, discovering who is mentioning your brand or products, finding influencers in your industry, and find “super-targeted” followers such as who is following a particular person or brand and lives in a specific city.

Noting that “Each social media operates a bit differently, and each brand’s followers have their own preferences and moods…(so) there is no One-Size-Fits-All trick or strategy” for “perfect” social media posts, Irfan Ahmad shares the essential elements of a highly shareable blog post along with an infographic showing best practices for promoting content on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Vine, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, and Google+.

Garrett Moon offers helpful guidance on how to increase social media traffic by sharing each piece of your content more than once on various social networks, along with five tips on how not to overdo re-sharing and risk appearing to be a spammer.

Daniel Sharkov offers helpful tips on a handful of social media tactics you should be using, covering LinkedIn (“Did you know that unlike most social networks, a rather high percentage [about 20%] of your [LinkedIn] contacts actually sees your updates?”), StumbleUpon, Google+, Triberr, and Facebook.

The always fascinating Rebecca Lieb contends that “email and search now both enjoy wallpaper status. They’ve faded into the background. This is absolutely not meant to diminish the importance or significance of either as a marketing channel…(rather) ‘wallpapering’ is a sign of maturity and essential integration into the larger marketing organization,” and that social media is now approaching that status as well. What do you think?

Everyone knows social media has become an essential channel for marketing and content distribution, but Maria Lopez Fernandez reminds readers that not all social networks are created equal: each has its own distinct characteristics, uses, and etiquette, and she provides guidance here on how to make the best use of Facebook, Twitter, and blogging – as well as how to put it all together.

Samy Simorangkir shares an infographic which details the required image dimensions for social media profiles on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, YouTube, Instagram, and Pinterest, along with half a dozen “additional rules of thumb to keep in mind” for optimizing profiles on the largest networks.

Writing that online video “is a terrific way for small business owners to compete with the big brands. But creating effective (as in watchable) content and then promoting it can be intimidating,” the brilliant TJ McCue has compiled a list of 30 resources for small business, from expert online training to helpful guides, infographics, online video editing tools and more.

Scott Fasser believes it’s a “colossal mistake” to try to use social media to persuade your target audience to buy. Instead, he lays out a five-stage process for businesses to evolve their social media activities from “nascent to awesome.” At the base stage, companies are listening to buyers and watching competitors; by stage five, a company is truly executing as a social business.

Jacek Blaut explains in detail how to use Facebook Open Graph tags to obtain “a degree of control…over how information travels from a third-party website to Facebook when a page is shared (or liked, etc.),” why marketers need to know about Open Graph, and how to implement these, as well as how to use Twitter Cards to “stand out from the crowd” on Twitter by generating additional content from your tweets.

But precisely what constitutes “best practices” in SEO is a continually (and lately, rapidly) moving target. Yesterday’s on-page optimization and link building tactics—even those used with the best, non-manipulative intentions—may get a site penalized in search rankings today for being “over-optimized.” (You can’t be too rich or too thin, but apparently you can be too optimized.)

So what’s a marketing manager, PR professional or SEO specialist to do? Keep up with SEO trends and changes. Optimize off-site content (for example, on YouTube and other social platforms). Use effective SEO tools and marketing metrics. Create link-worthy content. Use social signals to boost rankings. Learn how to do all of that and then some here in more than three dozen of the best SEO guides and tips from the past year.

General SEO Tips and Guides

Laurie Sullivan explores how online advertisers and search engine optimizers will adjust to a not-too-distant future “when the act of typing keywords into a search box to create a query becomes invisible? The act of searching for information will blend into voice-assisted programs, with geolocation targeting supported by data.” She reports on how Google, Ask, online ad platform vendors and others are simultaneously creating and adjusting to these changes in technology.

Louis Rix recommends four questions that marketers ask before hiring an outside SEO consultant or firm, such as what kinds of reports they provide and how they build links (great question). His fourth suggested question is a bit tricky however, as even the author notes that “Nobody can promise you a No. 1 ranking.”

Gareth Owen presents 10 important elements for on-page SEO, though he acknowledges that “perfect” may be stretching things a bit (“It’s worth noting that the ‘perfectly optimized page’ above won’t be perfect for all verticals, or for all brands – not everyone has the ability to add customer reviews to their product pages”).

Adam Audette outlines four trends he sees in SEO, among them “Further Corporatization of SEO in the Enterprise: The trend over the last several years has increasingly shown SEO teams ‘go within’ at large companies. This is a trend I’ve long supported and recommended, for example in my piece on in-house SEO teams. In fact, for enterprise companies to realize exceptional results in SEO, they almost always require a dedicated internal SEO team. That’s the case today primarily because incremental gains are harder to achieve.” True perhaps, but this is not necessarily a trend in small to midsized firms yet.

Going beyond the usual SEO guidance, Lisa Wehr explains how to capitalize on mobile and local search, Google encrypted search results, and even Google+ and Facebook: “Where on a social site can you insert keywords? From Google+ profiles to Facebook info sections, you can display keywords and all of your business web properties (website, Twitter, YouTube, corporate blog, etc).”

Writing that “When you first launch a new website, it’s a blank slate in the eyes of Google and the other search engines,” Sujan Patel serves up a five-step plan for gaining search ranking, from “make sure that your site is set up as effectively as possible from an internal SEO standpoint” to planning for ongoing optimization.

For websites that are truly global in terms of their market targeting, Crispin Sheridan offers a handful of helpful tips for optimization, among them engaging in local link building: “Link building, whether through traditional efforts such as outreach programs or guest blogging, social media, and leveraging partnerships, will always be one of the strongest ways to obtain more favorable rankings. In addition to helping with rankings, the search engines will look at the origin of the links to help determine local relevance. For example, a Chinese site that has a large number of links coming from other China-based sites will have a stronger authority within the local China search engines.”

Reporting that nearly a third of b2b marketers “consider search engine optimization to be very effective — more than email marketing, content marketing, and most noticeably, paid search,” Daniel Burstein outlines warning signs that a company may be overvaluing SEO, to the detriment of considerations like providing valuable content and optimizing for conversions.

While it’s not SEO strictly speaking, optimizing your YouTube videos for search is a great way to increase brand exposure, and to (indirectly) drive website traffic. Brian Honigman provides an outstanding, comprehensive guide to optimizing videos from tags and titles to playlists, annotations and channel branding.

Sean Clark contends that “Keywords (are) a thing of the past,” and that social media signals (particularly from Google+) are the future of search engine ranking signals. True? Perhaps. Carefully consider Sean’s arguments and those of his commenters.

Scott Gilbertson reports on DuckDuckHack, “a developer platform that allows anyone to add new features to the search engine.” The platform enables anyone to write plugins (to go along with current “goodies” like time-based queries and unit conversions) for the search engine and share them. Is this article really one of the best SEO guides of the past year? Maybe not, but it’s hard not to love DuckDuckGo.

Dr. Peter J. Meyers distills the answers to 1,000 private questions asked of SEOmoz into this compact summary of SEO wisdom, such as “One-trick Ponies Make Good Glue…People naturally get comfortable with one aspect of search marketing (link-building, on-page, social, etc.) and then want to ‘perfect’ it, but at best they hit diminishing returns fast.”

Simon Heseltine offers a helpful guide to the features in Google Webmaster Tools, from getting started through navigating the dashboard, messages, configuration, assessing a website’s health (e.g. through crawl errors), search queries, internal links, sitemaps and more.

Rand Fishkin dispels myths that shouldn’t be keeping SEO practitioners awake at night, such as having a large number of backlinks from a single domain (unless the linking site is really spammy or the links were built manipulatively) or keyword density that’s “too high.”

Noting that “80% of people who visit a website get there from typing a keyword in the query box of a search engine” (seems a bit high, your mileage will vary) and “90% click on websites on the first page” (of search results), Rob Petersen defines 10 imperative SEO metrics for marketers, from the number of keywords driving traffic to the number of pages indexed by search engines.

Adam Stetzer suggests “seven small business SEO tips to help earn more business through traditional organic search rankings,” among them understanding that onsite SEO is necessary but not sufficient; that creating engaging content is critical; and that content marketing should be used to earn backlinks (“Quality content containing humor, information, controversy, politics or training usually brings backlinks – and is definitely considered acceptable SEO”).

SEO Tips for Panda and Penguin

Aaron Wall has a long, detailed conversion with SEO expert Jonah Stein about the impact of Google’s series of Panda algorithm updates, and how to respond to penalties. One key line from Jonah: “It is short sighted to believe that any of the SEO niche strategies are going to survive if they are not supported with PR, social, PPC and display.” Which is pretty much what the web presence optimization (WPO) framework is designed to address.

Krista LaRiviere reveals, in her words, “how Google’s algorithm changes impact both backlinking and social signaling; how to build an SEO social signals strategy; how your SEO backlinking and social signals strategies come together in your content strategy; (and) how to measure it all.”

Jill Kocher provides some details about Google’s throw-the-baby-out-with-the-bathwater approach to penalizing “over-optimization.” For example, one sign of over-optimization to Google is reportedly “Linking repeatedly from body copy to a handful of key pages with optimized anchor text. If 33 of my 100 pages link to www.jillsfakesite.com from the body copy with the anchor text “Jills Fake Site,” that should count as over-optimization.” Never mind that there may be perfectly legitimate reasons for doing this, and it may improve the user experience.

Speaking of over-optimization, Rand Fishkin (again) here reviews half a dozen ways to avoid Google’s “over-optimization” penalties, including this on in-content text links: “go with logical, useful, change it up when you’re linking to pages, maybe a couple of times, in some spaces. You have a blog post and it mentions a page on your site that you want people to actually go to and that you think is useful in context. Great, link over there. Fine, use the anchor text. Maybe use a modified version of the anchor text, a little longer, a little shorter, a little more natural sounding, and you’re going to get these same results, but you’re going to do it in a much more effective way. You’re not going to be at risk of whatever is happening with this over-optimization penalty.”

James Mathewson outlines four ways Google is killing SEO, including semantic search: “How do SEOs traditionally optimize pages? By advising their clients to put keywords in strategic places on a page. When Google goes to semantic search, it won’t be as much about keywords at all, but on the meaning of the words you use. This might be the biggest SEO killer of all. If tuning our content for keywords our users care about is no longer an effective strategy, what is left for SEOs?” He believes content strategy is the new SEO.

Reassuring that “Not all search engine penalties are permanent, and with a little detective work and remedial action, you should be able to restore your previous rankings and rebuild the flow of organic traffic to your site,” Sujan Patel (again) outlines a five-step process to determine if your site has been penalized, and it so, recover from it.

For those concerned about Google’s Panda update (which is to say, anyone involved in SEO), Lisa Buyer highlights a number of resources for help including guidance on optimizing beyond Google, including advertising, socializing, pinning, profiling, twittering, and more.

Laurie Sullivan (again) reports that “Content shared from Facebook and the amount of backlinks appear to influence organic search engine results most, but Google +1s have the strongest impact on rankings,” and that recent analysis of Google ranking factors in the post-Panda-and-Penguin era suggests that social signals will play an increasing role in site ranking.

In this must-read case study for any site hit by Panda, Glenn Gabe explains how even a large, mature, well-respected website with a stellar link profile can get hit with Panda penalties, what caused this to happen, and the single most important thing that needed to be done to regain ranking and traffic.

This post from Chris Warren would be a must-read for anyone struggling with search traffic issues in the post-Penguin era even if it only contained steps one (“Understand your link profile…The biggest risk factors are a combination of lots of low quality links with targeted anchor text”), two (“Learn what makes a good link…there is a lot of evidence that these high value links are really the main drivers of a domain’s link authority”) and five (“almost never change your URLs”).

Muzzammil Bambot steps through some of the biggest negative factors in post-Penguin search ranking and how to correct those, from getting rid of paid links and excessive links from a single domain to having too many exact-match text links (solved by increasing the diversity of text link variations).

AJ Kumar suggests strategies for using social media to improve search rank, but just as importantly to “future-proof” your site from still more Google algorithm changes by using social media to reduce your reliance on organic search traffic, for example by including “prominent social sharing buttons at both the top and bottom of each blog post on your website (or use a scrolling option that moves down the page alongside your readers).”

Kent Lewis does a commendable job of explaining how Google’s Panda and Penguin updates affected search rankings, and practical steps for avoiding penalties and regaining rankings (e.g., “Cancel or remove unnecessary footer links. Take it easy on the internal ‘SEO’ linking”), though his contention that “A minority of those sites (negatively affected by these algorithm changes) may be legitimate, but a majority of those impacted were consciously in violation” is questionable, particularly given the experiences of other experts noted above.

Pete Myers (again) shares his single most valuable SEO tip for 2013, writing that: “While I can’t tell you Google’s next move, I can tell you one thing with absolute certainty – there’s more to come. So, how can you protect what you’ve built in 2013? I was going to write a long list of suggestions, but I realized that they almost all boiled down to just one idea. I’m not going to toy with you – my top tip for 2013 SEO is…”

Best SEO Infographics

Writing that “SEO is a large and dynamic puzzle…to have a successful SEO strategy, you will need to all of the pieces of the puzzle together,” Berrie Pelser presents an easy-to-grasp infographic covering the basics of on-page optimization, coding, site architecture, social factors, reputation, links and more.

Erik Holladay shares an infographic from Markus Allen that details the major ranking factors used by the leading search engines and the significant changes and upgrades made to ranking algorithms from Lycos and WebCrawler in 1994 through Google’s Panda algorithm update.

Douglas Karr presents an excellent SEO infographic contrasting what used to work in terms of keyword targeting, user experience, on-site content (e.g., “stuff title tags with keywords”), anchor text, directory submissions, news releases, and more, to what works today (e.g., “social traction correlates with links…Google+, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Pinterest are the most important SM platforms to SEO”).

Indisputably the largest business-oriented social network, LinkedIn has emerged as a crucial site for professional networking, B2B marketing, hiring and job seeking. LinkedIn now boasts more than 200 million members across 200 countries, and adds two new members every second; what’s more, 35% of LinkedIn members use the site daily.

Furthermore, due to its multiple sharing options including buttons, apps, personal updates, company updates, and industry-focused group discussions, LinkedIn is often among the top three or four traffic sources for B2B blogs. As a key driver of both traffic and online visibility, LinkedIn is a key component in any B2B firm’s web presence optimization framework.

How can individuals use LinkedIn most effectively, whether for personal branding, job seeking or networking? How can companies best use LinkedIn as a marketing platform? What are the best practices for advertising on LinkedIn?

Find the answers to these questions and many others here in more than two dozen expert LinkedIn guides, tactics, tips and infographics.

Optimizing Your LinkedIn Profile and Use

Tracy Gold offers tips for creating a more effective LinkedIn profile, among them writing a rich but concise summary (“use concrete details like results you have generated and tasks you do on a daily basis to show people how awesome you are, not tell them,” and connecting with care (“I favor being a tad picky. I’d like to think I could recommend—or at least answer questions about—anyone I am connected to on LinkedIn”).

Shelly Kramer recommends half a dozen key changes to power up your LinkedIn profile, such as adding an application: “LinkedIn offers a number of apps to help you add depth to your profile. Share what you’re reading, embed your SlideShare presentations, showcase your WordPress blog or add a poll. Other applications are available for specific industries, including Legal Updates, Real Estate Pro and Lawyer Ratings.”

Jesse Stanchak interviews “LinkedIn Jedi” Dave Gowel about using LinkedIn as “a relationship filter, that when you put in all the relationships that you already have, it allows you to see the ones that you could have more easily, or get information about potential ones.” The key “is to start with a really high quality first-degree connection pool” so that those potential second- and third-degree connections are really meaningful.

Hoping to land that dream job through LinkedIn? Josh Dreller advises avoiding these 10 over-used, meaningless, or just plain dumb phrases to describe yourself, such as “guru” or “visionary”—”terms such as ‘guru’ imply that you’re beyond an expert in something; that folks should be showering you with rose pedals or sacrificing goats in your honor. And, hey, if you’re a guru, why do you need a job? Self-appointed royalty titles only make most people feel like you’re going to be a huge pain-in-the-butt to work with.”

Shelly Kramer (again) lists a dozen techniques for advanced use of LinkedIn, such as how to hide your status updates (“If you’re connecting with new business prospects or making changes to your profile in preparation for job seeking, you may not want to broadcast that activity to your network”), make yourself anonymous (for example, when conducting competitive research) and block your connections and group activities from competitors.

While the title may be a bit exaggerated, Steve Kovach nevertheless highlights several of the less-used features, such as LinkedIn’s resume builder tool, which “will build your resumé in a snap. It takes all the information in your profile and coverts it to a simple resumé that you can print out. There are a bunch of templates to choose from too.”

Writing “Whether you’re a LinkedIn newbie or just need to become more effective on the site, these tips offer great ideas for LinkedIn networking,” the authors provide more than two dozen tips and resources for more effectively using LinkedIn. Though targeted at recent grads, many of the recommendations apply more broadly, like being a connector: “If you know two (or more people) that should know each other but don’t, take a moment to introduce them to each other on LinkedIn. They’ll appreciate that you thought of them and recognize that you’re valuable as a person who offers assistance and great connections.”

Jim Nichols offers eight tips for utilizing LinkedIn in a job search, including helpful instructions on how to search for jobs on the business social network and connecting with recruiters: “A number of recruiters told me that LinkedIn is the source of more than half of their serious candidates. That’s a remarkable statistic and the operative word in that sentence is ‘serious.’…Recruiters are using LinkedIn to proactively find great candidates and check up on applicants that they are reviewing. If you aren’t there in a meaningful way, you may never get serious consideration.”

Writing that “If you’re in B2B marketing or sales, you can do so much more with your LinkedIn account than simply look up your B2B marketing contacts. Use LinkedIn to help sell product, expand your networks, grow your business and gain free publicity,” Martine Hunter lists more than two dozen tactics to more fully engage on LinkedIn, such as conducting market research with Polls, sharing survey results with contacts, and “Check connections’ locations before traveling so you can meet with those in the city where you’re heading.”

Nicole Williams shares four tips for making an impact on LinkedIn in this concise but helpful post, for example: “Dress it up: People always say dress for the job you want, right? Well, maybe it’s time to dress up your online profile picture. People with photos are seven times more likely to have their profiles viewed. Having a more polished image will not only make you visible, but it also lets employers know that you are serious about representing their company in the most professional way…Plus, you’re twelve times more likely to have your profile viewed if you add more than one position to your profile.”

Jane Turkewitz recommends choosing “key strategic words in that will help define your core strengths and experiences” ot use in your title, using SEO strategies in highlighting your specialties (“Don’t be afraid to use multiple terms to describe the same function as I have done in this sample because everyone ‘searches’ using different criteria”) and securing high-level recommendations (“Director level and above recommendations are ideal”) among other tactics.

Marketing with LinkedIn

Amanda Maksymiw shares lessons from examining how HubSpot utilizes its LinkedIn company, such as “Build a robust product tab…HubSpot has done a really nice job utilizing the Products tab within the company page. Instead of simply focusing on its software products, HubSpot also links back to larger content assets such as eBooks, assessments, webinars, and its every (sic) popular Grader tools,” which is to say, not just literally products but also assets of value to prospective customers.

Stating that “We already know that LinkedIn is more effective at generating leads than Facebook or Twitter. 277% more effective, in fact,” Corey Eridon presents tactics for optimizing LinkedIn marketing efforts, from gathering insights from LinkedIn Group statistics to using targeted product tabs to create “different variations of your product tab for each segment of your target audience.”

Noting that “Adding LinkedIn’s social features to your company website is a great way to tap into both a large-scale recruitment platform and a targeted network of business contacts,” Brian Honigman describes nine ways to do this, including Share, Recommend, Follow Company and Apply buttons, as well as plugins for your company profile and, for recruiting purposes, “Jobs Your May Be Interested In.”

Kylie Jane Wakefield explains how two LinkedIn features, Targeted Updates and Follower Statistics, “allow companies to further target key demographics and measure the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns.” Targeted Updates enables “marketers to deliver updates to certain audiences based on specific details, such as company size, industry, geography, job function, and seniority,” while “Follower Statistics ‘provides insights about follower demographics, engagement levels, update impressions, total following, recent followers, and number of new followers month-to-month.’”

Pamela Vaughan details eight ways brands can make the most of their LinkedIn pages (such as incorporating your blog’s RSS feed: “While simply including your blog’s feed won’t broadcast its content to your LinkedIn page followers via the updates feed on their homepage…it’s a really easy way to promote your blog content to the visitors on your page”), supported with examples from companies like Voices.com and Zipcar.

Jeffrey L. Cohen details a handful of techniques for generating B2B leads through LinkedIn, among them testing free banners (“Want to test some new creative ideas? Want to test some landing pages? LinkedIn gives you three free banner ads at the top of the products and services page. Create images that are 640×220 pixels, upload them to your page and add a unique URL, preferably to a landing page, and you have free ads”) and incorporating video with a call to action.

Stephanie Sammons shares “seven powerful tips to use LinkedIn to drive more traffic to your blog,” among them six ways to “get active and engage” to drive more profile views and blog traffic, and four ways to “Post blog articles as status updates and link to relevant articles.”

Brittany Leaning answers the seven most common questions posed in a joint HubSpot-LinkedIn webinar, for example, Q: What’s the best way to find potential customers on LinkedIn? A: “Groups are your best bet, especially if you consider your business to be relatively niche. In a group, you can establish yourself as an industry expert very quickly through discussions and announcements. In general, groups are very engaging and allow for great communication between professionals interested in the same topic.”

Annmarie Hanlon provides a detailed guide to optimizing LinkedIn company pages, from reviewing all of the key elements to create or review when setting up a company page, to sharing company status updates, to utilizing the (admittedly limited) data provided by LinkedIn Insights.

Advertising on LinkedIn

Igor Belogolovsky serves up a step-by-step guide to building a successful ad campaign on LinkedIn, from determining whether or not LinkedIn ads are even right for your business (“If you sell something that benefits business owners or working professionals and you can, in one short sentence, clearly delineate why, the answer is probably yes”) through targeted, ad creation, budgeting and tracking.

Using NCAA March Madness as a metaphor, Kayla Kurtz explains why LinkedIn advertising could be a contender (“the glory of LinkedIn is it’s targeting capabilities. You can target all the way down to the CEO of a particular company and write an ad text written specifically to them, name included. If that isn’t targeting, I don’t know what is”) as well as limitations that could leave it in the losers’ bracket (e.g., historically low click-through rates).

Writing that “LinkedIn ads are very similar to those you create on AdWords or AdCenter, but with the added bonus of specific targeting options not found in the other ad campaign media,” Lee Rush Schwartz steps through the six elements of ad targeting on LinkedIn.

Arjan de Raaf offers tips for making the best use of LinkedIn in this short but sweet infographic, including filling out all areas of your profile, as “First impressions are everything. It’s important to have everything completed on your profile to appear more professional. It’s also an opportunity to keyword optimize your profile.”

Here’s a fascinating collection of LinkedIn facts and stats, among them: less than 10% of members use the paid, premium version of LinkedIn. More than 80% of members have fewer than 500 connections. And the four most popular features on the business social network are Groups, people searching, “people you may know,” and checking on who has viewed one’s profile.